


Dust is Not a Constant

by bene_elim



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alex Blake is a Good Mom, Diana is only mentioned in memories, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I noticed there are like..... no Spencer & Alex friendship fics???????, Introspection, Memories, Mother-Son Relationship, Sad Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid's childhood, quoting literature, um... more self indulgent Spencer reassurance, which is Wild because they have the Best relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24154243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bene_elim/pseuds/bene_elim
Summary: Spencer misses his mother every single day - some days just hurt a little bit more than others. Blakes listens and helps the best way she knows how.-It was a Wednesday and it was close enough to his birthday to make him a little jittery around the edges and he couldn’t stop picturing the little clumps of dust that sat in the corners of a neglected little home in Las Vegas - the persistent dust bunny that followed his mother out of the room, stuck to her left slipper as she dragged her feet out of the door.
Relationships: Alex Blake & Spencer Reid
Comments: 10
Kudos: 92





	Dust is Not a Constant

**Author's Note:**

> umphf, im having a rough time lately guys.,,,, this is all self indulgent as hell, though i saw that there are very few fics that feature a mother-son relationship between reid and blake, which i find SO strange bc blake was badass as hell (honestly one of my favourite characters) and she,,,, canonically sees reid as kinda her son? also just, theyre already great friends before she joins the bau, there is SO much potential here, why hasnt it been capitalised on? 
> 
> anyway!! im rambling, sorry! hope you enjoy :)
> 
> (im british and typing 'mom' felt SO WRONG but 'mum' looked EVEN WORSE)
> 
> (title is a quote from philip pullman's the amber spyglass.... had the c.s lewis quote and i figured i had to have something to balance that out, also,,,,, the day i stop being inspired and influenced by his dark materials is the day i die)

Spencer’s eighteenth birthday had fallen on a Wednesday, which he had always thought ironic. _Wednesday_ , derived from Middle English _Wednesdei_. _‘Day of Woden’_ , the Anglo-Saxons’ take on Odin: god of poetry and wisdom, among other things. But for all his own knowledge, he couldn’t stop questioning the wisdom of sending his mother away to a state care facility. His last image of her as he boarded the bus and left his old house behind in Vegas was that of a frantic woman, clinging to years-old essays on 15th century poetry, cursing him and begging for him in the same breath. It was a crack in his heart. 

The irony of Wednesday. Odin, god of war himself, had sought to ignite a battle between Spencer’s heart and head as he had watched the person he loved most in the world being dragged away, her slippered heels digging into the stained carpet. He hadn’t vacuumed in weeks. The dust bunnies were his last lingering impression of that house and, after packing away all their belongings, Spencer had turned his back and never looked back towards it again. 

Alex Blake’s house didn’t have any dust bunnies. Which, he supposed, was quite the norm for a well functioning adult (he resolutely did not think of his own flat, books piled higher than his waist and shoved into every corner to hide the fact that the dust had practically become ingrained in the hardwood floors), but he couldn’t help absently wondering when she had the time to clean so thoroughly, between cases and teaching. He was startled out of his reprieve by Blake herself, who perched on the sofa next to him and placed two glasses on the coffee table in front of them. 

‘Lemonade, homemade,’ she said when he just stared at the glasses. ‘I put a little bit of extra honey in yours so it’s nice and sweet. It’s the one on the right.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, voice quiet even as he reached out and took a sip. ‘It’s good.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said, and they fell silent. Spencer’s eyes swept the floor once again, somewhat incredulous of the fact that it was so spotless. He could process a lot with his logical mind - after all, it was his job to get into the mind of ruthless killers. Sometimes, however, no matter how he churned something over, he couldn’t quite _understand._

Dust. He was hung up on the dust. Or rather, the lack of it. 

It was a Wednesday and it was close enough to his birthday to make him a little jittery around the edges and he couldn’t stop picturing the little clumps of dust that sat in the corners of a neglected little home in Las Vegas - the persistent dust bunny that followed his mother out of the room, stuck to her left slipper as she dragged her feet out of the door. So strange - his visual recall of that day was as crystal clear as though it happened a moment ago, but the whole memory was eclipsed in silence. He could picture her lips moving, his own forming platitudes and meaningless apologies, but without the sound the whole thing seemed so insincere. 

And Alex Blake’s house _didn’t have any dust bunnies_. What an odd thing for him to fixate on; any other time, he’d be sapping up the chance to nosily take in every inch of the house, profiling in the back of his mind (inter-team profiling wasn’t allowed, but they all acknowledged that that rule was impossible to keep). But now it was a Wednesday and he’d had a bit of a bad day, though he couldn’t say why, and he couldn’t stop thinking about dust. 

‘Spencer? Why are you here?’ 

And, well, if that wasn’t the question. How could he say that he was missing his mother? He missed his mother everyday, everyday since he’d turned eighteen and stopped waking up with her at his back, antique books at his shins, sometimes her hand in his. The whole team knew that he missed her: he took every opportunity afforded him to see her and he wrote to her on a daily basis. But today, he missed her especially. 

‘I just-‘ he said, and then stopped. He couldn’t look at Blake, didn’t want to see her patient, caring expression. ‘I just miss my mom,’ he whispered at last. 

There was a little pause and Spencer yet refused to look up from where he had clasped his hands together, though they twitched with wanting to take the glass up again and drink. His throat felt dry. Maybe he’d inhaled all the dust and that’s why it was so clean, and why it felt so difficult to swallow past the dryness in his throat. 

‘Have you written to her today?’ 

‘Y-yeah.’ 

‘That’s good. Is she doing well?’

‘Yeah, she seems to be. The doctor said that she’s not been having any trouble with the medication, anyway. She still has some bad days, every now and then, but it’s nothing unexpected.’

He reached for the glass and took a shaky sip, eyes darting up to Blake’s and relaxing when he found her smiling softly at him. He had known her for a while now, respected her a lot and had learnt a lot from not only her lectures but also her way in the field. He’d been so worried that she’d think him pathetic, or weak, or silly or childish - in any situation, actually, but especially when revealing that he was missing his mother. He’d shown up on her doorstep, damp from the drizzle outside but eyes red-rimmed with the effort of blinking away tears. He’d thought that her welcoming him inside and offering a drink was just friendly politeness, but it was nice to find out that it was true fondness. 

‘Tell me about her,’ Blake said, unexpectedly. Spencer looked back at her, too startled to avoid eye contact this time. He jerkily put the glass back on the table. 

‘Uh - what do you want to know?’ 

‘Anything. A memory.’

Silence. Spencer shrugged a shoulder, not to communicate anything, but to try and inch his cardigan up from where it had slipped. He focused on his clasped hands. 

Quite a number of his memories with his mother were not particularly happy. He loved her dearly and always would, but he had been young and struggling and not always able to do as he knew would be best, simply because he did not have the means. He didn’t want to share one of those ugly memories. 

‘Okay, well, um, she would read to me. When she was in bed… she’d ask me to bring her books, and I’d bring as many as I could, maybe five or six. And then she’d let me pick one, and she’d settle down against the headboard - she had this, this, cornflower blue dressing gown and it always reminded me of the way the sky looks when its only just starting to tinge purple from the sunset, and it became my favourite colour for so long. And she’d just sit and read, and I’d sit under her arm and rest my head - I’d rest my head right here,’ Spencer tapped his collarbone, ‘and she’d read to me until she lost her voice or I fell asleep. I always tried to stay awake until she finished, because I had to take care of her, but she’d always lull me to sleep when she used that tone of voice. It was sort of like, maybe, when honey dribbles down your fingers and you lick it away and it’s all so sticky but smooth afterwards; yeah, that tone just made me feel so drowsy. And when I’d wake, I’d find all the books I had brought scattered on the bed, poking us in our sides and our legs and, once, somehow under my head - and sometimes she’d have the book she’d been reading from opened on her chest, left on the page I fell asleep on, and sometimes it would be lost amongst the other books. But it was always so peaceful, like an endless Sunday afternoon, and I could forget all about how sick she was because she was reading Milton or Chaucer or _Le Morte d’Arthur_. I loved that most. I loved the romance.’ 

He stopped when he realised how long he’d spent talking. He took a peek at Blake but she was still smiling fondly at him and he was able to flash a small smile back which quickly went from pleased to nervous. 

‘Uh, sorry.’ 

‘Nothing to apologise for, Spencer. I did ask, didn’t I?’ Blake said, expression not changing. Spencer smiled hesitantly up at her. ‘She must be where you got your love of poetry from, then. She sounds wonderful.’ 

‘She used to, uh, recite lines of Shakespeare while she did work around the house. This was back, um, back before my dad left. She was a bit better, then. She’d sit me where she could see me and recite Shakespeare, and I, uh,’ Spencer huffed a breath of a laugh, lips curling. ‘I’d tell her which play, act, scene and line it was. It made her happy. Sometimes, she’d purposely get bits wrong, just so she could hear me correct her.’

Blake said nothing, though she kept an eye on him as he reached for his lemonade again. He felt simultaneously like sharing more and shutting up for good; an effect of the fact that he resisted talking about his childhood with everyone, ever. The most that people knew about him was that he was bullied, abandoned by his dad and forced to look after his mother at age ten, and that he graduated at age twelve. All the members of the team would politely, and with genuine concern, ask if his mother was doing well after he returned from visiting her, but none had ever asked about what she was like. Those who had been there for the Fisher King case remembered her in parts, but what kind of indication of her character was that? Blake was the first to show interest in who she really was to him. 

He glanced quickly back at Blake. 

‘It’s just, I haven’t seen her since Easter and it’s my birthday soon, and it’s Wednesday,’ he said, though he knew she wouldn’t understand, ‘and I just miss her. Even when I see her, I miss her. Sometimes I don’t feel like she’s… uh, completely there? I don’t really… know. Why is your house so clean?’ 

‘What?’ She said, startled at the sudden subject change. 

‘Well, it’s just, we got home from the case in Seattle last night, really late, and I know you had a class earlier today, so I’m just wondering. Did you know that the average U.S house collects forty pounds of dust a year? It’s so spotless in here…’

‘Well, thank you, Spencer, but what is this really about?’ 

‘My flat’s covered with it. I try, really, but it seems like we’re always working and I never have a minute to get to it all, especially in the corners where I’ve got books stacked. They don’t all fit on the shelves, you see, so I keep them in piles around…’ 

Blake didn’t reply and Spencer trailed off. He was deflecting, he knew, pushing back a difficult topic by talking about something else. Something that had been bothering him since he’d walked through Blake’s door. Something that had been bothering him since he’d watched his mother drag a dust bunny out of their Vegas home. He didn’t want to look at her and see the confusion in her face, or the kind encouragement that he knew would also be there. He knew that she knew what he was doing. A person who works with words like a linguist does knows the power of silence. 

No noise. No-noise. Nonoise. Nonoise, nonoise, nonoise. In the nonoise of the air between them, Spencer opened his mouth and tried to pry out something from his dry-throated vocal cords. 

‘When-‘ He cleared his throat. ‘When they, uh, took her away… She was wearing these light blue slippers. And, um, she, she didn’t want to go, obviously, and she was, was digging her heels in, and the floor was all dusty because I’d been working on my PhD and hadn’t the time to write my thesis _and_ teach _and_ look after her _and_ clean up, I was going to spend that weekend cleaning up, but she was dragging her heels and…. She was dragging a bit of dust out of the house. It was stuck to the sole of her left slipper, and in that moment it just made me think of all the times she dragged her nails through my hair, because she would do that when I was sad or feeling anxious, and it… felt like… like that was the final goodbye. That’s when I knew it would never be the same.’ 

He startled at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder, pushing him down to lie on the sofa. He looked upwards at Blake as he tried to situate his head comfortably and yet out of her way, but she just gently guided him to rest in her lap, her fingers descending into his hair seconds later. 

‘Like this?’ She said, running a fingertip down his parting. He shivered lightly and closed his eyes. 

‘Yeah.’ 

He didn’t want to tell her that, when his mother used to card through his hair like that, he would soak up every single second and sweet touch. He didn’t want to tell her that in the middle of particularly bad episodes, she would scratch at everything that came within a step of her, her fingernails sharp at the edges from where Spencer had to cut them for her. He’d been on the receiving end of many bloody scratches on his arms, sometimes his neck, one memorable occasion his face. He knew she never meant it, always seemed so mournfully regretful when clarity settled over her again. Those would be the times when she’d run her fingers through his hair, as though to show him that her hands can do more than fight and hurt and defend. 

Somehow, Spencer figured that he didn’t need to say anything. 

The nonoise between them settled, finally, like a heavy blanket. He breathed a little easier, on his back, head pillowed by Blake’s thighs - as though the dust he’d felt he’d breathed in had cleared, his insides as spotless now as the house. His eyes felt heavy and his brain slowed right down, something so uncommon (even when he slept) that he felt like he was floating: a feather drifting on the surface of an undisturbed lake. Maybe sometimes it was a good thing to talk to someone. 

‘ _“But please, please - won't you - can't you give me something that will cure Mother?” / Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. / “My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great.”_ ’

Spencer smiled. ‘C.S Lewis, _The Magician’s Nephew,_ ’ he said, blinking blearily up at Blake.

‘Yes. I used to read it to my son. He loved it a lot, would always ask for it to be his bedtime story, night after night after night.’ 

Spencer got the feeling that he shouldn’t ask further, so he hummed. His eyes fell closed again as her fingers continued to rub at his scalp. 

‘He used to like his hair played with, too. Put him straight to sleep.’

‘Hmm…’

A breathy chuckle. ‘It seems to be doing the same to you, I see.’

‘…Your voice. It’s like her’s. Honey dripping. ‘M drowsy,’ he slurred. 

‘Sleep, Spencer. I’ll be here when you wake,’ Alex replied. 

He succumbed. 

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to keep to characterisation n stuff as much as possible, so if you have time let me know how you think i did! thanks for reading <3


End file.
